Bill’s Paint

An interviewer asked Bill:  “What would you recommend for an artist just starting out? What do they need to do to get better? To Improve?”

Bill responded, “I think, paint a lot, because a lot of trouble is you don’t know the material, don’t know the paint, and the nature of paint. Paint can break you and paint can make you. Wet-on-Wet is a funny animal, you paint into other colors and that makes mud, usually. A lot of artists are “mud-makers”. I created a paint that will not make mud because you paint on top of paint. That is a wonderful thing.”

Paint can break you and paint can make you. [Click To Tweet].

Most paint made today is not like the thick, rich paint Bill used during his career. Manufacturers have designed today’s paint for a different style of painting. The paint is softer — full of oil. You can see this for yourself. Take a tube of paint and staple it upside down on a piece of stiff cardboard. Loosen the top of the tube so it just stays on the tube. Within just a few weeks, you’ll begin to see oil streaming down the cardboard.

These soft paints will not allow you to stack the colors like Bill does in his videos. The softer paint mixes with the bottom layer of paint becoming “mud”. Or, the top layer of  paint slips and slides over the bottom layer. This makes it difficult to highlight or blend colors.

At the beginning of Bill’s career there was no paint on the market that worked with his style of painting. Bill would squeeze tubes of oil paint onto newspaper so that it would absorb the oil. Bill struggled for many years to find the right manufacturer for his paint. Bill even lost his home in the process.

What other artist would have sacrificed so much for his students? Bill never compromised the quality of his paint and neither will we. We are proud to continue Bill’s legacy.